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'Saved by the Bell,' 'Knight Rider' Among Five NBC Shows Revived as Digital Comics

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Lovers of 1980s NBC rejoice: Five fan-favorite shows, including "Miami Vice" and "Punky Brewster," are being brought back as online comic books.

These days, even cancellation doesn't guarantee the end of a television series. Even if a show doesn't get resurrected years later by the Internet, turned into a cult movie or simply brought back on a different network, there are always comic books to keep fans happy and the characters alive -- just ask Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Dollhouse, Jericho and even the 1960s Adam WestBatman series, all of which successfully transferred from television to comic format. Now we can add five new shows to that list: Knight Rider, Airwolf, Miami Vice, Punky Brewster and Saved by the Bell.

Yes, someone is actually making a Saved by the Bell comic. Just let that settle in for a second.

That "someone" is St. Louis-based Lion Forge Comics, which plans to launch digital comic series based on the five NBC shows in the second half of the year, to be sold through Amazon's Kindle Bookstore, Apple's iBooks and Barnes & Noble's Nook bookstore and Kobo. Creators on the series include television writers from the animated Teen Titans, Ben 10 and Jackie Chan Adventures series, and artists Jason Johnson, Carl Reed and Lorenzo Lizana.

According to Chris Lucero, NBCUniversal Television's director of global consumer products licensing, the partnership was "a natural step for us as we continue to identify new ways to entertain our fans in the digital space." Lion Forge's CEO David Steward cites the series' impact on pop culture "from hugely popular characters such as Crockett and Tubbs, Zack Morris and Punky Brewster to highly stylized music and clothing choices" as the reason his company got involved.

More will be revealed about the series during San Diego Comic-Con the publisher says, but whether we can wait that long to find out if the Airwolf comic will count the show's controversial fourth season as canon remains to be seen.